. The biology of spiders. Spiders; Insects. COURTSHIP 205 some wolf-spiders show no courtship at all. If a pair of the species Lycosa pullata are introduced to one another in a cage, the male usually leaps at the female and mating begins immediately, without any preliminaries whatever. With other species, however, things do not move so fast. The courtship may consist, as with Lycosa amentata or Lycosa nigriceps, in waving the palpi in a semaphore-like fashion. Locket thus describes the be- haviour of the former species : " The male, on sighting the fe- male, started his usual antics. He r
. The biology of spiders. Spiders; Insects. COURTSHIP 205 some wolf-spiders show no courtship at all. If a pair of the species Lycosa pullata are introduced to one another in a cage, the male usually leaps at the female and mating begins immediately, without any preliminaries whatever. With other species, however, things do not move so fast. The courtship may consist, as with Lycosa amentata or Lycosa nigriceps, in waving the palpi in a semaphore-like fashion. Locket thus describes the be- haviour of the former species : " The male, on sighting the fe- male, started his usual antics. He raised himself as high as possible on his legs, extended his palpi as indicated above (Fig. 80), with- drew them, and extended them again, the positions reversed. Each time he did this he (usually) took a pace towards the female, and his abdomen quivered now and then. He would often work his way round the female, leaning over in the direction he was ; In other species the male may have legs, and not palpi, to dis- play. The common species, Tro- chosa ruricola, raises and lowers its first pair of legs alternately, quiver- ing as they rise, and with the tarsus pIG< 80#—Courtship of Ly- and metatarsus gracefully and cosa amentata. After gently waved up and down as they Locket- fall. An even more elaborate courtship is that of Tarentula barbipes (Fig. 81), in which the cephalothorax is raised by the second pair of legs, while both palpi and first legs are raised into the air together. The legs, in a bent position, are jerked as high as possible and then, trem- bling violently, are lowered to the ground. Then a step or two may be taken and the process repeated again and. Please note that these images are extracted from scanned page images that may have been digitally enhanced for readability - coloration and appearance of these illustrations may not perfectly resemble the original Savory, Theodore Horace, 1896-. London : Sidgwick & Jackson
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Keywords: ., bookcentury1900, bookdecade1920, booksubjecti, booksubjectspiders
